Here's everything you need to know about Friday's jobs report

A
worker cleans the stage in preparation for the 2008 Republican
National Convention.Reuters/Robert
Galbraith

The July jobs report and the next few after it will be all about
November.

Economists project that the Labor Department's report out on
Friday will show that the labor market remains in good, steady
shape.

And what the data say about how the economy is doing will be
increasingly significant as we head closer to the November
election.

Via Bloomberg, here's what Wall Street is forecasting:

Nonfarm payrolls: +180,000

Unemployment rate: 4.8%

Average hourly earnings month-on-month:
+0.2%

Average hourly earnings year-on-year: +2.6%

Average weekly hours worked: 34.4

"In general, voters tend to flock toward reform and bold plans
during times of uncertainty," Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist
at Glassdoor, wrote in a preview.

If data were to start showing cracks in the economy, particularly
in a key area like the labor market, Republican presidential
nominee Donald Trump would get more ammo to argue against four
more years of a Democratic president.

Trump is already doing this. On Tuesday,
he said at a rally in Virginia:

"The numbers are getting worse and worse all the time. If they
get real bad, I hope it happens fast so I don't have to — they'll
all blame me. You'll end up winning, and your first day, the
economy crashes because of some incompetent people before me."

Last Friday, an advance estimate showed that the
economy grew by 1.2% in the second quarter, less than
expected, as business investment slumped. This is the kind of
number that Trump refers to.

On the flip side, "good news pushes voters in favor of staying
the current course," Chamberlain wrote. "For this reason,
pollsters will be watching the next few jobs reports closely as
we inch toward Election Day."

Pollsters like Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight are incorporating
new economic data into their predictions of who will win.

But what's irrefutable is that the labor market right now is
stronger than the comparable periods in the last two elections,
Chamberlain noted.